SpaceX: Musk bets heavily on AI, not just rockets, for future gains

SpaceX (SPAX.PVT) outwardly focuses connected rocket launches and its bleeding-edge Starlink outer net service. But CEO Elon Musk and the institution are betting heavy connected another, non-so-intuitive gamble — AI.

Buried successful the S-1 prospectus SpaceX filed connected Wednesday is the largest full addressable marketplace ever claimed successful a public-company offering: $28.5 trillion, which the filing describes arsenic the "largest actionable" marketplace accidental "in quality history."

Only $370 cardinal of that comes from motorboat and different space-enabled services. Another $1.6 trillion comes from Starlink-based connectivity. The remaining $26.5 trillion, astir 90% of the opportunity, is artificial intelligence.

Essentially, Musk and SpaceX are asking investors to worth the institution arsenic a vertically integrated AI level that happens to motorboat rockets.

"SpaceX is nary longer a abstraction institution successful the accepted sense," Chad Anderson, laminitis and CEO of Space Capital, told Yahoo Finance. "It's a vertically integrated AI institution competing with hyperscalers and aiming to ain the afloat stack."

After SpaceX absorbed Musk's different company, xAI, successful February 2026 and restated its results, consolidated 2025 gross reached $18.7 cardinal — maturation of much than 30% — but the twelvemonth resulted successful a nonaccomplishment from operations of astir $2.6 billion. The operating loss, Anderson said, is the outgo of gathering 2 caller businesses astatine once.

"Revenue grew 30%+ to astir $19 billion. Starlink threw disconnected implicit $4 cardinal successful operating income," Anderson said. "Net nonaccomplishment owed to concern successful maturation — AI and Starship. This is simply a institution with a batch of upside ahead."

That concern led to large capex spends. SpaceX spent $20.7 cardinal successful 2025, with $12.7 cardinal going into AI — information centers, GPUs, and the COLOSSUS and COLOSSUS II grooming clusters. In the archetypal 4th of 2026 alone, AI capex deed $7.7 billion.

But the prospectus discloses determination is immoderate upside to the AI thesis: AI laboratory Anthropic (ANTH.PVT), a rival to xAI's Grok model, has agreed to wage SpaceX $1.25 cardinal a period done May 2029 for compute capacity.

At afloat ramp, that is astir $15 cardinal of annualized gross from a azygous customer, monetizing infrastructure SpaceX has already built. SpaceX says it expects akin contracts successful the future.

The wide concern thesis, however, inactive hinges connected what SpaceX is known for — rockets.

The prospectus lists immoderate nonaccomplishment oregon hold successful scaling Starship arsenic its apical hazard factor, due to the fact that Starship enables next-generation Starlink satellites, direct-to-cell connectivity, and orbital AI compute.